The way I understand "hinterland" is "the geographical area where goods from the harbour can easily be transported to". This can be over water (river or canals), but also by train or truck.
"The worldken of this behaving, in all its manifold ways, is
called minglingken."
Funny, the Dutch word for chemistry is "scheikunde", which would be more like "breakupken" ("scheiden" = to separate). Although I think "minglingken" sounds better...
Ghent (Belgium) has also done this for several years already. Among others, my kids' school uses this for local activities such as going to one of the city parks (a weekly activity in certain years/classes); only the teacher and non-local kids don't ride for free, total cost for the school is much less.
The park was called after Leopold I, the first king of Belgium, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Belgium. This was in 1877, a decade before the Congo atrocities. (Source: https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopoldpark_(Brussel) in Dutch)
But I think your remark was valid though. Leopold II's atrocities get very little attention in Belgium compared to Nazism.
There are still quiet a lot of statues of him. Which indeed sounds weird in relation to Hitler statues. It might be an idea to give them the same treatment as the Nazi party grounds in Nuremberg. Proper context next to them.
I pick a project that interests me at some point; currently "I'd like to have an internet music player that sits on my cupboard and doesn't require my tablet".
Then:
* decide on platform (CC3200, because it has wifi, enough processing power,
and I happened to have one)
* build something that decodes an MP3 stream (investigate, pick Helix as the decoder,
make it run on the CC)
* think about hardware (DAC, amplifier)
* think about enclosure (wood, how to do front panel)
I knew next to nothing about many of these things when I started, and I'm making lots of mistakes along the way, and I won't become an expert in any of these things, but the overall goal/"target" provides a guide to decide what to learn next. A search engine then helps me find the resources I need.
For tracking my progress, I've started to use Emacs org mode.
My kids (4 and 6) go to bed between 7 and 8PM (target = 7:30). They have to get up at 6:30 AM so we can get them ready for school without too much of a rush, so they go to bed early. They are both good sleepers; that helps of course.
Subtracting time for household work, that leaves 1-2 hours each night for leisure. Weekends can give a bit more leisure time, but not always. Sometimes my girlfriend and I eat after kids-bedtime to have a chance to actually taste our food (or go out, with a babysitter staying with our kids), once a week I go to the local hackerspace, the rest is more or less for myself.
For me, I learned to ruthlessly prioritize in my list of things that I want to do, and I got good at structuring my projects in result-oriented blocks of work that can be done in one or a few time blocks.
I also don't watch TV; this went way down the priority list after the first kid was born.
> [...] and every time there is a minor breakthrough I feel like throwing a party
Yes!
It's become a deliberate strategy of mine to set the subgoal complexity in my personal projects such that I get a small "yes! it works!"-rush about once per week or so. It's what keeps me going on larger projects, even if occasionally some part takes longer to do.
I move daily between different environments (OS X, Windows, Linux in VMs and on Raspberry Pi) and languages (C, Python, shell scripts).
Switching between different editors on all platforms was a chore. Emacs provides me with the same basic functionality in all environments and for all languages I use. Additionally, it works very similarly both on the desktop and in a terminal, so I can use a powerful editor even in fairly restricted environments.
So yes, for me it's worth it.
I started with plain file-editing, with a focus on keyboard shortcuts for editing. When they felt somewhat comfortable, I started using basic modes (fill-mode for better editing, C and Python modes). As you go along, you'll find things you want to do (format paragraph, autocomplete,...) You'll look them up, and find that they are either built-in, or available as a mode. Rinse, repeat :-)
